JACKSON, Miss. ― A new structure for remedial courses at Mississippi’s 15 community colleges could help more students graduate more quickly.
The centerpiece of the model is an effort to move some students who previously would have been forced to take a remedial course for no academic credit into credit-bearing English and math courses. The colleges would provide supporting labs to boost those borderline students’ performance, in hopes of helping them succeed.
“The sequence of remedial education can sometimes be a barrier to students being successful,” Jones County Junior College President Jesse Smith told a joint meeting of the House and Senate Colleges and Universities committees Tuesday.
Community colleges voted to adopt the changes in November and will roll them out in fall 2014. Lawmakers, who have long questioned why the state has to spend so much on catch-up courses, applauded the effort.
“I think what it will do is make things more efficient for students and make sure they get that degree,” said Senate Universities and Colleges Committee Chairman John Polk, R-Hattiesburg.
In the fall 2012 semester, 20,000 of Mississippi’s 76,000 community college students took at least one remedial course. Officials estimated that, in 2010, Mississippi spent $25 million teaching developmental classes to community college students, and another $10 million teaching them to students at universities.
Most of the students taking catch-up courses are recent high school graduates who aren’t prepared for college. State Superintendent Carey Wright says new tougher courses being adopted at the K-12 level will hopefully cut that number. Nationwide, more than 25 percent of remedial students are over age 30, possibly having forgotten high school lessons.
